A Simple Meat Lasagna

Lasagna is the perfect dish to make when serving a crowd, because it can be made in advance, and just about everybody loves it. It is a layered dish with numerous levels of pasta alternated with sauce and ingredients such as meats, vegetables, and cheese, and usually topped with melted grated cheese.

Once you learn how to make lasagna with this basic recipe, you can vary the recipe to suit your tastes. You can make it vegetarian by substituting spinach or roasted vegetables instead of the ground beef. You can make it meatier by adding sausage. You can make it leaner by using ground chicken or turkey instead of beef.

Not only can you change up the meat and vegetable ingredients, but you can make it creamier by using an alfredo sauce or vodka sauce. You can make it Mexican-style by using seasoned taco meat, enchilada sauce, and pepper jack cheese. The possibilities really are endless.

The flat, wide lasagna pasta noodles are believed to be one of the oldest types of pasta in the culinary world. The dish is believed to have originated in the Naples region of Italy during the Middle Ages. Although, in ancient Rome, there was a dish similar to a traditional lasagna called lasana or lasanum, which isLatin for the words "container" or "pot."